“Are Demons Real?” ~ 4 Questions To Dissect

General Discussion
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I’ve attempted to understand and reconcile the areas where people who believe all spirits are within the mind of the magician (and/or egregores created by him) meet those of people like me, whose experiences and beliefs equally lead us to see them as being as separate and distinct, as any human person.

There are some areas where I cannot bridge this and they seem to be the most fruitful areas for people who believe spirits are not “real” to weigh in with their ideas, in a constructive way.

So, this is a debate thread, not a working thread :smiley: – differences of opinion welcome, though this isn’t looking for “winners” and “losers” - a convincing bit of reasoning backed up with experience speaks its own truth.

Questions:

Regarding the notion that each spirit evokes or otherwise contacted is a manifestation of that magician, taking archetypal or otherwise “imaginary” forms:

  1. Do you think animals could have given rise to some spirit forms before mankind evolved?

  2. In the present day, could cognitively advanced animals like whales and dolphins, even pigs, dogs, and some primates and birds, be doing this, as their mental abilities, capacity for abstract thought, and emotional intelligence exceed that of human infants, and yet it’s generally agreed that infants are more psychically “open” than adults?

  3. What do you see as the role of the beliefs of the many branches of humanity before homo sapiens (neanderthals being the most famous of course)?

  4. Do you, like some Science of Mind/Law of Attraction teachers, also believe that embodied spirits, aka humans, are to some extent co-created by oneself?

While these questions are resolved by the concept of a pre-existing Source which could manifest things into being prior to the advent of mankind (be that evolved or created/GMO’d into being), for those who don’t believe in this, I am curious how you would answer these questions, and think it may be a fun debate to have? :smiley:

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Legitimately I woke up this morning thinking about that IMO they are both part of you and separate I believe you just call their energy to you and that’s just you, if that makes any since I got distracted while typing and forgot what I was saying lol

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I think about this often. Dinosaurs ruled the planet for a long, long time before man came along. We know that they were not particularly bright, since their brains were tiny and they had gigantic bodies to haul around, BUT there were a lot of them for a very long time. And they clearly had strong drives to reproduce, to live, to raise young, etc. I think those primal (or was it pre-primal?) drives likely birthed the early forms of our present archetypes and spirits.

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Some of those beliefs, like Neanderthal DNA, were assimilated. But I think some spirits simply died with those branches when they became completely forgotten. Are they still out there somewhere, now in the form of a nature spirit or something? Darn good question. I guess spiritual anthropology could be a thing

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Nothing below primates could have done that, I think.

I think metacognition is a requirement for giving rise to a spirit. Metacognition is a sign of higher consciousness, and we seem to be the only species who have it.

I don’t quite understand this question. Can you rephrase it, please?

Humans are avatars of the source. The spirits we work with are avatars of the source too, but they don’t have an ego (they may develop one when working with you but prior to that, no).

I mean if we take what Azazel told EA at face value, we create the spirits we work with, so prior to our evocations, the spirit(s) did not exist.

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Sure - there were many branches of humans prior to us, like neanderthals, who were more developed than primates, some showed evidence of ritualistic burial for example, and they’re (mostly) gone now.

So, did they give rise to spirits, do you think, and if so, what happened to those spirits?

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Oh, okay, yeah I think they did give rise to spirits. Those spirits may still be with us to this day, only under different names and different faces.

Kind of like how there’s always that rebellious Promethean spirit in almost every society, even in those that did not have contact with each other. To this day, we see the same archetypal force or spirit.

Kind of like Kek is now Pepe. Same spirit, different name & face (cartoon frog).

But to evolve, I think spirits need humans. Otherwise they’d just be abstract forms. We give them names and appearances.

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This I agree with as they tend to take the form we expect. But I personally don’t believe we created them. I think our ancestors, no master how ancient, tapped into the states needed to access those primordial energies that we call beings.

They touched the void and found other emanations of the void.

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Yeah could be. Who knows really. The more you try to come up with a solid theory the confusing it gets. Fuck it. It works, and I don’t care why or how.

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Thats about where I am at too :joy:

I just figured I’d pitch my two cents.

(To everyone, its just how I see things. It may change, it may not. But the connection I have and have been shown to the void makes me think as such, and so for now it shall remain)

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I’ve always liked the third alternative as stated by DuQuette: Yes, spirits are all in your mind, but your mind is a lot bigger than you think it is.

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Here in North Texas, there were Indians for much longer than there have been European settlers. They navigated using the system of rivers and creeks that feeds into the Trinity River (“Arkikosa” to the Caddo), which then runs down to the Gulf of Mexico. Much of the Trinity has been rerouted and dammed up, but a surprising amount has not been. And I am firmly convinced that spirits, important to those long-gone Indian tribes, are still to be found in those still-natural place.

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I thought that Kek and Pepe were two different beings.

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Nope; Kek is now running around as a cartoon frog known as Pepe

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Apes or baboons were known to “howl at the sun”, the rising and setting sun, in gutteral vowel sounds. There are a couple forms of it recorded, one summons Azathoth, the other is supposed to attract divine attention.

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My cats and others definitely pick up on presence of spirits. After my recent working, my cat won’t go back in my room.
I think they were highly intuitive and magical, not just cats, animals all around. Look at India and China in art and religion. A lot of constellations are animals or hybrids. Many Priests or magi of Atlantis and Lemuria had entities, Atlantis housed a dragon.
Totem pole. Goetic beings. Tribal/Non Tribal gods and goddesses.
I think animals may have provided other forms, yes.

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The only answer I have for three is the primal drives, survival the top. There is a possibility of shamans. The earliest evidence of religion are pretty sapiens bear worship paintings in caves. New land found and explored may corroborate.

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I agree with @Nyxifer
It might seem like a philosophical cop-out, but once the wall comes down, the question, “What are spirits?” is easily reversed into, “What am I?”

Most of the magic I’ve used is related to elements and nature. Animals definitely refine spirits of their own. ‘Refine’ is a key word the way I see things these days. I believe that human conciousness draws upon fundamental energies and weaves them into more complex and specific demons.

Or, perhaps these demons have drawn humanity out of nature so that they can be realized and fed by our evolving awareness. Mathematically, time is just a matter of perspective. Cause and effect are the same thing in the eye of eternity.

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I think that spirituality is a reward for our own Ego.
Human being can’t bear the idea to be just a chemical and electric box. He needs to fell himself the highest form of Creation.
This is my thought after reading Andrew Newberg books and some satanic essays under atheistic perspective.

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I’m gonna reply without reading the other replies lol…

In terms of the Soul…I actually agree with Hinduism on this one (as I do with a great deal of philosophical things). I do not believe that the human mammal is the only critter on Earth, or in the cosmos, gifted with individual essence.
I fucking LOVE my cat. And the one that preceded him. I was looking at my wee familiar one day, ruminating on the concept of the Soul and decided this: if he didn’t have a Soul, neither did I. He’s my best friend and shows emotions, has dreams, etc.

As for “entities” and their like…I believe that, for the most part, we access deep, hidden realms of consciousness when we perform our operations and commune with them. I believe we have, as a species, given thousands of names to the same things and imbued them with specific traits. Because they are representative of the things that reside within us and without, in all of existence.

Different people will have slightly different experiences with the same entities - this is the individual perception being imprinted. The interesting thing is that this adds to the existing entity. We all contribute to their growth, essentially.

Likewise, we must consider the generations that have come before and everything that they’ve ever poured into these same entities, over countless lifetimes. All of that is carried through. This is largely why they seem to have their own personality traits and specialties. The collective unconscious, race memory, etc. This is part of that deep, hidden knowledge that we all possess.

For all intents and purposes, what it comes down to is that they are within each of us, and they are unique entities in their own right because that is what we’ve made them over a millenia. Either way, we still have control over them when we access that place of infinite knowledge and understanding.

One more thing to take into consideration is the fact that we do not percieve the world as it truly is. Literally. We don’t see the full spectrum of light. Our concepts of 3-dimensional space is incorrect. The thing we call Time doesn’t exist beyond a measurement of physical motion in a specific place. And so on. What we see is a construct built by a mind that would not be able to take the information overload if we processed things as they truly are. It’s a coping mechanism.

“Everything is energy”

They’re as real as we are (or any of this is), which is to say, barely real at all, in the grand scheme of things.

And that, my friends, is why magick fucking works. When we do this shit, we’re giving ourselves the ability to access what we know, deep down, is real. The world (worlds, really) is/are our plaything. =)

Love,

  • lls
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